Crucible is a surprisingly fun competitive shooter and the first major video game released by ... [+]
When Amazon announced Crucible a couple weeks back, reactions from gamers and the gaming press were somewhere between tepid and unenthusiastic.
Crucible’s announcement trailer just fell flat, and didn’t really show off what makes the game honestly quite a bit of fun to play.
I was able to take part in a demo of the game last week, and I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. I’ll have to play it some more to really decide if it’s something I’ll stick with long-term, and much depends on Amazon’s support of the game going forward.
Designed by Amazon-owned Relentless Studios, the game—available on Steam only for the time being—has a lot going for it out the gates (it’s just gone live as we speak). Here are five reasons you should play Crucible.
1. It’s free-to-play.
Crucible
This is the first and perhaps most important reason you should try out Crucible. There is literally no financial investment to give it a shot.
Crucible will offer a seasonal Battle Pass similar to Fortnite, Apex Legends and various other free-to-play games out there, as well as items from the game’s Item Shop that include Hunter and weapon skins and all the other cosmetics you’ve come to expect over the years.
Since the game is a third-person shooter, whatever skins you equip will be easily viewable which is nice.
Still, I wouldn’t recommend even a free-to-play game if it didn’t have other qualities that make it worth your precious time.
2. Crucible is a MOBA that’s actually accessible and fun.
Crucible
Okay, so here’s how the game works.
Matches place on a very large map. It’s a colorful alien world filled with various AI monsters, healing items and so forth. You drop in at various points on the map and can choose where to respawn each time you die (except for in Alpha Hunters mode which has respawning disabled).
Hopefully Amazon will release new maps in future seasons, but for now there’s just one and it does the trick. It looks good and it’s very large with a fair amount of variety in terrain.
Scattered across the map are Harvesters which you can capture for your team to passively gain Essence, which levels your characters up granting them new powers. You can also gain Essence from killing monsters and enemies. As you level up, your character will gain new powers or power-up starting abilities. Leveling up is crucial since the team with the highest level will also have the most powerful abilities, giving them an edge in combat. Matches begin with teams rushing off to level up and stock up on healing items as much as possible before engaging in combat with other players.
It’s all very focused on tactical teamwork and requires coordination and communication in order to win. You don’t want to rush off into battle alone against three enemy players since you’ll just die and have to respawn far away. But you might want to run off and tackle one of the many side objectives that pop up over the map before the enemy team does, since these can give your squad a serious advantage.
In other words, it’s basically a MOBA like League of Legends, with neutral AI enemies and two teams of characters that gain new powers as matches go on. The big difference is that it’s far, far more accessible and easy to grasp. I’ve always found MOBAs to be incredibly frustrating, but I had a blast with Crucible.
That’s also partly because it’s an action shooter at the same time. You have abilities and powers, but that’s all under the framework of a competitive third-person shooter. Skills that apply to competitive shooters apply, which I think will give more players like me a chance.
There are a total of 10 different Hunters—of human, alien and robot variety—to choose from, each with wildly different abilities and play-styles. I’ve only tested out a couple so far, but I’ve fought against all of them. There’s tons of variety from one to the next, and forming a good team with a balanced suite of abilities will be a crucial part of the strategy.
3. Heart of Hives is a blast.
Crucible
Crucible has three game modes and I’ve played all three.
Harvester Command pits two teams of eight against one another. You have to capture Harvesters to score points similar to a match of Domination in Call Of Duty. It’s the most basic mode and a good way to test out different Hunters and their abilities.
Alpha Hunters is Crucible’s Battle Royale mode. Eight teams of two head off into the map with respawning disabled and you play until only one team is left standing. More on this mode in a bit.
By far Crucible’s best and most engaging mode is Heart of Hives. This is the most exciting mode and requires the most teamwork. Here’s how it works:
Two teams of four face off against one another. Like the other two modes, you’ll start out at a point of your choosing on the map and break up to go gather Essence and level up, gather health packs and so forth. You’ll want to capture some Harvesters for the passive Essence boost they give you, and possibly recapture some the enemy team has taken.
The big twist from Harvester Command is that giant AI bosses called Hives spawn across the map. These aren’t super hard to kill, but both teams end up converging on a Hive at once and these often end up being big, tense fights.
When the Hive goes down, the Heart is exposed and you have to capture it by interacting with it for a few seconds. It’s long enough that an enemy can easily come and knock you off the Heart, so you’ll want to make sure to really clear an area before attempting to capture one.
The first team to capture three Hearts wins. It’s genuinely fun and intense, and I’m excited to see where they go with this mode in the future. It reminds me a little bit of Destiny’s Gambit mode, though more PvP focused.
4. Alpha Hunters has a cool twist on the Battle Royale genre.
Crucible
My second favorite mode in Crucible is Alpha Hunters. This is basically Duos Battle Royale, though only sixteen players fight at any given time.
Like other Battle Royale games, a circle slowly closes on the map, forcing teams closer to one another.
The interesting twist, and something I’d like to see more of in other games, is that players can join forces if they’re down a teammate.
If you find another solo player you can ping them and offer up an alliance, similar to Hunger Games. Now you have a team again, giving you a better chance at defeating the remaining Duos.
The only problem with this is that it doesn’t last. There can be only one winning team, and newly formed alliances don’t count. If you’re the last two players standing at the end of the match, you’ll need to kill or be killed.
5. Impressions are positive all around.
Crucible
I’m not the only one who played in the demo of this game and enjoyed what I played. From what I can tell, most impressions so far are positive.
The Washington Post’s Gene Park writes:
“It’s hard to say what kind of legs “Crucible,” will have. Competition for attention, even in the shooting genre, is fierce. But it’s easy to say what “Crucible,” gets right: Gorgeous graphics, controls well, a low barrier for entry, low barriers of entries for players of many skill levels and a solid mix of today’s most popular genre ideas.
What matters, though, is that by the end of my two-hour session, I found myself wanting to learn more about the game, and explore upgrade paths of several other characters. In an industry filled with also-ran games, my skepticism for “Crucible” has waned.”
Over at Polygon, Austen Goslin writes:
“Crucible is the best kind of familiar, as this description likely makes you think of games as diverse as League of Legends or Overwatch, but Crucible’s development team has put enough thought into how to remix these ideas that the result is worth at least trying, even if you’re up to your eyeballs in new, competitive online games.”
Engadget’s Nick Summers says that Amazon is finally serious about video games, even if he isn’t sure this one will capture the hearts and minds of gamers:
“Crucible is a risky but confident play for the MOBA and battle royale crowd. A brand-new IP with no established movie, TV show or comic book fanbase to lean on. Regardless of how it lands, the title will be a tipping point; the moment when yet another technology giant started competing for video game fans’ time and money.”
Nick Statt, writing at The Verge, thinks it will find an audience:
“Crucible is highly derivative and designed with a rather bland aesthetic, but it ends up being surprisingly unique when you’re actually playing it. That makes all of its well-worn game modes, including a mini battle royale and one inspired by e-sports heavyweights like League of Legends, feel more like new experiences rather than remixes of popular classics.
“After trying an early version of the game for a few hours ahead of release last week, I’m fairly confident Crucible, which releases for PC only on May 20th, will find an audience that’s been itching for this particular mashup of design ideas and genres in an accessible package. It’s fun and dynamic and has a depth of strategy to it that, while not perhaps at the level of a Dota 2 or League of Legends, is certainly deeper than your standard shooter or battle royale. How big that audience is, especially when it’s competing with so many similar games doing similar things, will be a test for Amazon’s prowess as a game publisher and its ability to market the game using its Twitch platform.”
Crucible is out today on Steam. If it sounds fun, you should give it a shot. It will cost you nothing but time. I had a lot of fun previewing the game, but I’ll need to spend a lot more time with it to really solidify an opinion or pen a review. We’ll see where Season 1 goes and whether this hodge-podge of game genres and modes can find its wings.
Note: Crucible is set to launch at 12 pm PT today but is still showing not available on Steam as of this writing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2020/05/20/5-reasons-you-should-play-amazons-surprisingly-fun-game-crucible/
2020-05-20 19:31:26Z
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